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Coney in the '50s was very much the same, lots more exposed flesh though. There's something truly magical about this image. This huge crowd of people, most of whom never saw each other before, nor ever again, enjoying "the perfect moment" together.

The overcast weather limited the crowds that day, which I'd guess from the women's shapes and hair styles was more like 1908-1910 than later. Not one of those "wall of human flesh" days on the beach that prompted Casey Stengel's "Coney Island? Nobody goes there any more - it's too crowded."

It's stuck me from time to time when I've looked at old photos with lots of people in them that, in many instances, I'll bet, the camera inadvertently captured the only proof that someone ever existed.

I get this same feeling when I watch old film clips - like people coming and going on a busy street, for instance. They are always the people in the background, not the people the camera is focusing on, that make me wonder if, in some back corner of that person's subconscious, a little message was sent to them saying "Be sure to walk down 3rd Avenue, at Elm Street, on your lunchbreak. Somebody will be taking a movie of the horse-teams there and you'll be captured there, too, for posterity. It'll be a way for you to tell the world: I existed! My life was valid!"

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.